Town Square

Unions give BART strike notice as tonight's strike deadline nears

BART's union leadership has given the required 72-hour strike notice, setting in motion a walkout planned for midnight Sunday that would halt all BART train service ahead of tomorrow morning's commuter service.

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Comments (17)

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Posted by Genie
a resident of Birdland
on Aug 2, 2013 at 8:28 am

Bart fares are too expensive as it is and Bart employees are well compensated employees. They have good salaries and excellent benefits for jobs that require minimal training. Why should we, who subsidize their salaries have to pay more and be tremendously burdened by a strike. A classic case of California special interest or the union having to justify its existence by getting more and more perks for its members.

BART is the best compensated public employees in this state. Pension Armageddon is approaching. Pension plans are under funded and will only continue to get worse w/o meaningful reform. BART management has only made the problem worse by bowing to union pressure year after year.

Just another example of the Unions out of touch benefits.
BART gives it's employees and their families free travel passes on its system- even after they retire. The cost All together BART forgoes more than $2.1 million a year for the free ridesWeb Link

To Cholo's posting on the union's legal right to strike, it is illegal in some parts of the country for transit workers to strike.
Once this strike is settled, I would encourage the truly concerned to write to their respective elected officials to do what several other major cities have done and that is to make such strikes illegal. Many major cities already have in place laws that make strikes by transit workers illegal. New York has such a law in place. A strike is illegal under the provisions of an addition to New York State Civil Service Law called the Public Employees Fair Employment Act, more commonly called the Taylor Law. It prohibits municipal workers from striking and provides alternative means for dispute resolution. The law provides for criminal penalties including imprisonment of union officials, and fines against the union and individual striking workers. Such a law here would put an end to such unrealistic demands by a union out of control.

Posted by Guest
a resident of another community
on Aug 2, 2013 at 10:18 am

Cholo no one is saying they don't have a right to strike (right now...hopefully there will be some law put into place that won't let them do this again.)

This whole issue has boiled down to greed and who has more power. It's disgusting that someone who cleans dirty bathrooms and picks up trash makes more than teachers. If the unions want the public to get on board with them, they should work through the strike and keep the trains running. If these unions get everything handed to them on a golden plate, before long no one is going to want to ride BART...what will the workers say then when layoffs start happening?

If Plutonians and hang around the fort types are so unhappy with a worker's right to strike, then work to change the law.

Or, move to place where worker's cannot strike...like Tibet!

It's the American way to say no, no, no, WE WON'T WORK!
Maybe a few of the posters need to buy themselves a new pair of socks, deodorant, a rolling pin, hairwax? who knows?

There are soooooo many whiners and tag alongs that all I can say is if the weather is nice today, at least shampoo your hairs...HALO EVERYBODY HALO! HALO IS THE SHAMPOOO THAT GLORIFIES YOUR HAIRS SO HALO EVERYBODY HALO!!!

Kathleen,
Loved the article! Sounds about right. Only thing they didn't cover was viewing everything through rose colored glasses. Guess if we had all that "stuff', wouldn't need the glasses anyway. Thanks for the chuckle.